February 08, 2012

January has been nice (too nice) weather wise, so I've no real excuse for feeling so blah. I think maybe I just have too many things going on, with nothing ending up like I envisioned. And January has never been my favorite month. I have been busy stitching, but am having a hard time getting motivated to post about it. Please bear with me. :)

They are making one a day, and I quickly decided that one a day isn't going to be feasible for me (since I have no discipline and skip from project to project). Further complicating these is that when I printed out the foundation block to stitch, I didn't realize that it printed at a reduced size. So they are an oddball measurement. While there may be a few more houses--they are definitely going to be a smaller wall quilt--someday.

Then I spent several days on the road, visiting Phoenix and then my parents, while I worked on this block from King George III:

Our springlike weather helped me finish these Flower Garden blocks which are all tilting to the left (which given the way my neck feels today, I am doing too!)

Then Just Takes Two offered more temptation. I couldn't decide on just two fabric colors--I don't think I've ever made a non-scrap quilt, and definitely not a two fabric only quilt. Since I need to use some of the fabric I already had on hand, after much digging around, I decided to do the blocks with scraps and pieces I have from Roberta Horton plaids(1990's) . I already have a couple ancient UFOs from the fabrics in process, so hopefully I won't end up using up something I'll need for them, but since I couldn't find the UFOs, who knows. Here are some of the blocks that were finished when the photos were taken:

I managed to do all of the January blocks in January (hooray!) and have finished the first group of February ones too, although again I had the printer at less than 100% size and now have a 12" instead of 12.5" block. Not sure that I am going to redo it or just add a strip somewhere. (Hopefully this lesson is learned now--as long as my memory works.) I'm using more than two fabrics in some blocks--when using what's left, you use the pieces you have in the right size.

Sometime in January I also felt the need to do some mindless cutting and piecing, and when I ran into the Sparkle Punch quilt along at the Oh, Fransson! blog, yet another new project began. Since I had leftover strips in many of these colors, cutting was easy (and I didn't feel quite so decadent in starting another new project--I am just using up the stash after all).

I finished all the cutting and the initial stitching of star points, but am at the point where they need to be laid out on the design wall. Unfortunately my design wall is already occupied by a few layers:

Yes, that's Hugs & Kisses somewhere under there--a project I am tired of, and so obviously avoiding. And yes, if you are counting, THREE new projects added in January. (and I've already started another in February!) Guess that explains the blah feeling!